Thunder Bay (Cork O'Connor Mysteries) Read online

  Twice over I owed Meloux my life. And what was he asking for, really? In the decades I’d known him, I’d experienced things that had no rational explanation, and I felt the rightness of what he was pressing for now. Still, I was a man with obligations of my own.

  “Tomorrow, Henry,” I offered. “We’ll go tomorrow. I have things to do first.”

  “What things?”

  “I have a business to put in order. I have a wife to explain this to.” I didn’t mention Jenny. “Give me a day, Henry. One day. Please.”

  He seemed to realize what he’d asked. “I’m sorry, Corcoran O’Connor. I was being selfish.”

  But I was the one feeling selfish, knowing that if it were Stevie in trouble, sick in the way Meloux’s son was sick, I’d want to leave immediately.

  “First thing in the morning,” I promised.

  I reached into my shirt pocket and drew out the watch. I handed it to Henry. He opened it and spent a moment staring at the photograph inside.

  “Come on, Stevie,” I said, standing.

  Stevie leaned over and patted Walleye. “Good-bye, boy.”

  Meloux got up, and the dog with him, and they saw us to the door. The meadow was full of grasshoppers. They jumped around in front of the cabin, climbed the log walls. A big grasshopper lit on Meloux’s arm. He eyed the bug, and the bug eyed him.

  “What do you make of all these insects?” I asked the old Mide.

  He thought a moment. “The lakes and rivers are full of grasshoppers. The fish who eat them are fat. The bears who eat the fish are fat. If our people still ate the bear, we would all be fat.” He grinned, plucked the bug off his arm, and put it on the ground, rather gently I thought. “Tomorrow, Corcoran O’Connor. When the sun comes up, I will be ready.”

  We crossed the meadow and entered the woods. Stevie kept in step beside me without a word. In that heavy silence, the walk back to the road felt long.

  We found the Bronco covered with grasshoppers. They flew off the doors as we reached for the handles. The grill was full of the insects we’d plowed through on our way there.

  When we were inside Stevie asked, “Are there grasshoppers everywhere?”

  “I think so,” I said. I put the key in the ignition.

  “This many everywhere?” he said.

  I was glad to see he was curious and had moved on to a subject other than Walleye.

  “I don’t think so, buddy,” I said. “This is pretty unusual.”

  I turned the engine over.

  “There were grasshoppers smashed all over the Canada car,” Stevie said.

  “What Canada car?”

  I checked the road behind me, preparing to turn around and head toward town.

  “The one that went by when we stopped.”

  “It was from Canada?” I looked over at my son. “How do you know?”

  “The license plate in back. I saw it.”

  Even deep in his concern over giving Walleye back to Meloux, my son had caught details that escaped me. But then, I’d been more worried about the SUV taking off my door. It wasn’t necessarily a significant thing. Canadians came across the border into Minnesota all the time. But it struck me as chillingly coincidental, especially in light of the fact that up the gravel road where the SUV had gone there was no real destination.

  Instead of turning around, I drove straight ahead. Not far from the double-trunk birch, I came to one of the old logging trails, unused for so long it was mostly overgrown with weeds. Parked just far enough among the trees off the road so that it couldn’t be too easily seen was the SUV.

  I reached across to the glove box where I kept my cell phone, intending to call the sheriff’s department, but I was too far north of town to get a signal. I swung the Bronco around so quickly Stevie fell against his door.

  “What are you doing, Dad?”

  “Henry’s in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, son. I just know he is.”

  I drove past the trail to Henry’s cabin. A quarter mile farther I came to a lane that headed toward Iron Lake. A big wood-burned sign was posted at the entrance to the lane, NORTHERN LIGHTS RESORT. The resort cabins stood on the shoreline a couple of hundred yards through the trees. They were owned by Melissa and Joe Krick, both Aurora natives. I’d known them all my life.

  I said to Stevie, “I want you to run as fast as you can down to the Kricks’. Tell them that Henry’s in trouble, that someone’s trying to hurt him. Tell them to call the sheriff’s office and get deputies out to Henry’s cabin right away.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Try to help Henry.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “Just do what I ask,” I snapped at him. He looked surprised and hurt. “This is important, Stevie. For me and for Henry and for Walleye.” I reached across him and popped his door open. “Go. As fast as you can. Go!”

  He hesitated a moment more, then leaped out and his little legs pumped like crazy as he ran down the dirt lane.

  FIFTEEN

  I’d used precious minutes taking Stevie to the Kricks’. I didn’t really think the sheriff’s people would arrive in time to be of use, but I wanted to be certain Stevie was out of harm’s way.

  I pulled to the side of the road at the double-trunk birch. I jumped out, ran to the rear of the Bronco, and popped the tailgate. There was a locked toolbox welded to the frame in back, which I opened with one of the keys on my ring. Inside was a smaller lockbox. I opened that with another key. The lockbox held a basket-weave holster, a .38 police special wrapped in oilcloth, and six cartridges. As a result of incidences that had occurred when I was sheriff of Tamarack County, I’d taken to keeping the firearm in the Bronco, close at hand. I pulled it out once in a while to clean it, but since I’d given up my badge, I hadn’t fired it except to practice.

  I slipped the holster on my belt, filled the cylinder of the .38, and slapped it closed. I dropped the weapon into the holster and secured the snap. Then I hit the trail at a sprint, heading for Meloux’s place.

  I’d completed two marathons in my life, but during all the unpleasantness on Chicago’s North Shore the year before, I’d taken a bullet in my leg and I still wasn’t a hundred percent. I figured I could make it the half mile to the clearing in three or four minutes. I was breathing hard by the time I reached Wine Creek, halfway to the cabin. As I danced over the stones that formed a loose bridge across the stream, I heard Walleye begin barking fiercely in the distance ahead. A few moments later came a rifle shot and a pained yelp and Walleye stopped barking. A second shot followed immediately.

  I reached the edge of the trees. Much as I wanted to bolt for the cabin to check on Meloux, I forced myself to stop. From the shadows I surveyed the clearing, the cabin, the outhouse. Except for the grasshoppers springing up everywhere among the wildflowers and the long grass, nothing moved.

  The door to Meloux’s cabin stood open, but I couldn’t see anything in the dark inside.

  Two shots. Heavy weapon. A rifle.

  I scanned the meadow, the lakeshore, and finally eyed the outcrop of rocks just beyond Meloux’s cabin. A path led from the cabin through the rocks to a fire ring where Meloux often sat and burned cedar and sage to clear his spirit. It would provide good cover if someone wanted to take out the old man.

  The meadow grass stood more than knee high. I lay on my belly and crawled from the trees into the grass, making my way slowly across the clearing. Every few yards I lifted my head to check the situation.

  As I neared the cabin, I heard a low wail. It came from the rocks where the trail snaked through to the fire ring. I paused, listened, and finally understood. I got to my feet and cautiously took the trail from the cabin. Beyond the rocks, I found Meloux.

  The old Mide sat cross-legged near the circle of stones, which was full of ash from many fires. At his back, the blue water of Iron Lake stretched away, a perfect mirror of a cloudless sky. Next to him lay Walleye, a graze of blood along hi
s flank. The dog licked at the wound. In front of Meloux, facedown, was sprawled the body of a man. The back of his head had exploded in a gaping wound full of white skull fragments, raw pink brain matter, and blood.

  Meloux’s eyes were closed as he sang. I recognized the chant. He was singing the dead man along the Path of Souls.

  I sat down and waited. When he finished, the old man looked at me.

  “Are you all right, Henry?” I asked.

  “I am confused.” His dark eyes dropped to the dead man, where a grasshopper crawled across the thick, white neck. “He hunted me. What kind of game is an old man like me?”

  “What happened?”

  “You left and Walleye sensed something. He’s old like me, but that nose of his is like a pup’s. The scent he caught was not good, I could tell. I took my rifle from the wall and I put in a cartridge. We were downwind of the rocks, which would he a good place for a bad man to hide. I was not thinking it was a man, though, but a different animal—a wolf, maybe, or a mountain lion. So he surprised me. But a man does not get old like me without luck. Just before he fired, a grasshopper flew into his face. His shot went wide. Mine did not.” Meloux reached out and gently patted Walleye. “His bullet nicked my good friend. My good companion.” He shook his head. “What satisfaction is there in hunting an old man and an old dog?”

  I got to my feet and walked to the body. Although I knew I shouldn’t move it, I rolled the corpse just enough to see the face. Meloux’s bullet had entered the right eye, but the features were still quite recognizable.

  I’d never again have to worry about turning my back on Henry Wellington’s bodyguard. Edward Morrissey was dead.

  SIXTEEN

  When I resigned as sheriff of Tamarack County, I gave as my reason the ill effect the position had on my family and personal life. In light of all that had happened in the weeks before my resignation, most people seemed to understand. For a couple of months, Captain Ed Larson, who headed up major crime investigations for the sheriff’s department, performed the duties as acting sheriff. But Ed made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want the job permanently. When the county commissioners finally got around to holding a special election, one of my best deputies ran for the position and won: Marcia Dross. I’d hired her as the first female law enforcement officer in the department. Eight years later, she became the county’s first female sheriff.

  She stood just inside the doorway of Meloux’s cabin, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, listening while Ed sat with me at the table, taking me through the questions. She was tall, with hair the color of an acorn and cut short. When I was sheriff, I wore the uniform. The guy before me had preferred three-piece suits and looked like a banker. Dross had her own look. She generally wore jeans, neatly creased, a tasteful sweater or flannel shirt from the likes of Lands’ End, and a pair of chukka boots. The ensemble looked good at a town meeting, but wasn’t at all out of place at a crime scene in the Northwoods.

  The motorboat the department used for patrolling Iron Lake had come up from Aurora. Morrissey’s body, zipped in a bag, had been loaded aboard and transported to the marina in town where it would be transferred to a hearse and taken to Nelson’s Funeral Home, there to be kept in cold storage until a decision had been made about whether to perform an autopsy. Cause of death was pretty apparent, and Tamarack County’s budget would be sorely affected by the cost of the autopsy, so my sense was that in this case, the postmortem examination would be relatively perfunctory.

  I’d told Ed everything I’d observed that morning. I’d also told him about my trip to Thunder Bay. He was going over it all again to be certain of the details and to try to make sense of the attack on Meloux. He’d already interviewed the old Mide, who’d been taken into town to give a full, written statement. Jo was going to meet him there to make certain he had legal representation. Meloux had told Ed everything, so I didn’t see any reason to hold back.

  “Did Morrissey see the watch?” Dross asked. It was the first question she’d offered in the interview.

  I nodded. “When Wellington tossed it to me.”

  “You’re sure he hadn’t seen it before that?”

  “When I met him at the marina in Thunder Bay, he gave me the box and indicated he didn’t know what was in it.”

  “Considering what he tried here, he doesn’t strike me as a man whose word ought to be taken at face value,” Dross said. “Where’s the watch?”

  “Meloux has it.”

  “Worth much, do you think?”

  “You’re asking the wrong guy, Marcia. To me, the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks is a big deal.”

  “What I’m getting at—”

  “I know what you’re getting at, and I don’t know. I suppose Morrissey could have been after the watch, but I can’t imagine it’s worth a man’s life.”

  In the cool corner of the cabin where he lay, Walleye moved and whimpered a little. Meloux and I had taken a good look at the wound. The bullet had grazed a path a few inches long across the dog’s left haunch. It had stopped bleeding, but stitches would be a good idea. I told Meloux when he left for the sheriff’s department not to worry, that as soon as we could, Stevie and I would get Walleye to a vet.

  “It’s possible the watch was more important to Wellington than you realized,” Larson said. “Maybe he sent Morrissey after it.”

  “And killing the old man was the way?”

  “That could have been Morrissey’s idea,” Dross said. “Where were you exactly when you handed the watch back to Meloux?”

  “Sitting right here at this table.”

  Dross walked over and looked through the window toward the rocks where Meloux had been attacked.

  “Morrissey had field glasses,” she said. “He could easily have observed the exchange of the watch and known it was in Meloux’s possession.”

  “Okay,” Larson said, moving us along, “the watch is a possible motive. What else?”

  “Have you got an idea, Ed?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact. How about rage?”

  Ed Larson was the brightest officer in the department, always had been. When I was first elected sheriff many years ago, I’d sent Ed to Quantico to learn from the FBI. He’d gone back periodically for training in profiling and other areas related to law enforcement. He didn’t just look at the known facts of a crime. More often than not, he had a pretty good speculation about the psychology behind the crime. This time, however, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Rage?” I said.

  “Directed at the father who wasn’t there his whole life, then suddenly shows up out of the blue. You said Wellington’s mental state was precarious.”

  “I said he wasn’t hitting on all cylinders, but I didn’t say I thought he was capable of murder. Especially the murder of his father.”

  “You didn’t say it,” Dross threw in, “but what do you think?”

  “I spoke with the man for ten minutes. I honestly couldn’t say.” Dross nodded, returned to the wall, crossed her arms, and leaned back. “Clearly we need to interview him.”

  Larson stood up. “I’ll call the provincial authorities as soon as I get back to the office, start setting things up.”

  Dross said, “It’s incredible that an old man like Meloux got the drop on somebody like this Morrissey.”

  “Incredible?” I shook my head. “There’s almost nothing about Henry Meloux that would surprise me anymore.”

  We were the last to leave the scene. Larson and Dross walked ahead of me on the trail through the meadow and into the trees, which was the only way to get from Meloux’s back to the road. Those who came to see Meloux came on foot. I walked more slowly than the other two, keeping company with Walleye, who was limping. I considered carrying him, but it wouldn’t have been comfortable for either of us. We just took our time.

  When we reached my Bronco, the road was empty, though a cloud of yellow dust kicked up by the sheriff’s vehicle still hung over it. Morrissey’s SUV had been impound
ed, would be gone over for evidence. I helped Walleye up onto the seat, then set out for the Kricks’ resort, where Stevie was waiting for me.

  Melissa pointed me to the dock. I found Stevie sitting with his feet dangling in the water. From there, Crow Point, where Meloux’s cabin stood, was a small sliver of dark land far in the distance. He was looking in that direction when I came up beside him.

  “It’s all over,” I said quietly.

  He jumped up and hugged me.

  I bent and kissed the top of his head. “Melissa said she told you Henry was okay.”

  He turned his face up toward mine, and I saw the ghost of worry still there. “I was still kind of scared.”